Each year, crimes, including theft, acts of terrorism, and other acts of violence, are a major global issue. Crime rates are rising, with drastic consequences for society, its members, and the economy. Automatic identification systems, such as asset management and security systems, have been long employed for combating property crimes, particularly shop lifting. Automatic identification systems refer to a host of technologies used to assist machines in identifying objects, such as assets and people. There are a number of technologies falling under the automatic identification umbrella, including bar codes, smart cards, voice recognition technologies, biometric technologies (such as retina scans), optical character recognition technologies, Radio Frequency IDentification or RFID systems, magneto-acoustic systems, and other technologies.
RFID, in particular, is gaining wide acceptance as a highly effective and inexpensive automatic identification methodology. RFID is a generic term for technologies that use radio waves to identify automatically objects. Passive and active RFID transponders or tags contain coiled antennas to enable them to receive and respond to radio-frequency queries from an RFID reader or transceiver (which also includes an antenna). The transceiver converts the radio waves returned from the RFID tag into a form that can be passed onto computers. Typically, a serial number that identifies a product uniquely, and sometimes other information, is stored on the RFID tag (which can store up to 2 KB of data). Passive RFID tags do not have a power supply. A minute electrical current induced in an antenna by the incoming radio-frequency scan provides enough power for the tag to send a response. Active RFID tags have an on-board power source and may have longer ranges and larger memories than passive tags and the ability to store additional information sent by the transceiver. Semi-passive RFID tags use an on-board power source to run the tag's circuitry but communicate by drawing power from the transceiver. Chips in RFID tags can be read-write or read-only.
Automatic identification systems, however, have not been a complete solution to preventing and/or solving crimes. For example, they typically require either movement of objects or people past scanners (e.g., palettes leaving a warehouse or airline passengers moving past a magnetic detector) or employees around a facility to verify manually that the data matches the records (e.g., stock takes). The locations of the scanners are fixed. Only if an object or person happens to pass through the scanner can they be located. Missing or stolen objects that are being used in a public setting often escape detection. Moreover, Local Area Networks or LAN's for automatic identification systems are not widely used due to the high cost and installation expenses of the cabling necessary to support the LAN.